


The Stag and Lion

by primeideal



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24287977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/primeideal
Summary: Nynaeve's memories turn against her.
Kudos: 6





	The Stag and Lion

The city was large, much larger than any of the villages in the Two Rivers. Maybe more people than if they had all lived in one place. Who would want to live in a city? Too crowded, too much disease.

Nynaeve's clothing was chilled from the river winds, but she walked briskly. First she would find a place to stay, and then...What river had she forded?

She had finished thirty-one of the one hundred weaves. She knew that.

She paused outside an inn that looked to be doing a good trade. Perhaps a gleeman had stopped in with his harp, or the cooks were shooing cats from the kitchen to prepare dinner for the guests. It would be a fine place, she decided, for her to stop and seek news of her friends. She stepped towards the door.

In an instant, the building went up in flames.

Nynaeve reacted without hesitating. She wove Water to surround the building, preventing the fire from spreading. It would be dangerous to try to quench it entirely with Water, but she could use Air mixed with Water to cool it, tempering the heat and buying time for the staff and patrons to get out. A sickly-looking young man stumbled out, supported by a large man in an enormous gleeman's cloak. Behind them, a pair of kitchen maids.

She could hear hooves in the distance, loud and synchronized. Not the panicked rush of travellers taking flight, but a squadron on a mission. Mercenaries? Whitecloaks? Who would have destroyed the innkeeper's livelihood? The guests frantically running outside had the look of common people. Even if Darkfriends could be anywhere.

The six-pointed star appeared at the edge of her view, on a road leading toward the city walls.

She had to _do_ something. "Are any of you injured?" she called, still channelling air to dampen the heat. Light, she must have seemed a madwoman, standing outside a burning in and staring at it as if her will had brought the flames!

A man who must have been the innkeeper stumbled outside; his apron and his balding head reminded her of Master al'Vere. Where _was_ Egwene? She should have been fleeing with the others. No, that was wrong. Egwene was the Amyrlin Seat. Who was on the road that she needed to hurry and find? There was someone out there fleeing for their lives, someone's husband or sister or friend. But then, couldn't that be said for the guests at the inn, too?

_Remember what must be remembered._ She ran, trying to keep the inn in her peripheral vision. Flows of Air, mingled with Earth to break up the smoke.

_An Aes Sedai would..._ Moiraine's voice. No, Moiraine was dead. The six-pointed star was at her feet. She tried to split off a flow and channel Fire, whirls of smoke in unfamiliar colors. Who would want to weave Fire when it was already consuming the city? _An Aes Sedai..._

She coughed, smoke thick in her nose, and then she was in the Rahad in Ebou Dar. Naked as the day she was born! What sort of fool walked naked through the Rahad?

She had finished thirty-two of the hundred weaves.


End file.
